The Off Topic Topic

[Jacob]

Apple will apparently follow EU's charger standard - using USB-c for everything - starting next year; and apparently this will apply to all their products world-wide.

Good for consumers, waste-reduction, and the EU

[HVC]

I have been listening to the history of Rome podcast

[HVC]

Apple will apparently follow EU's charger standard - using USB-c for everything - starting next year; and apparently this will apply to all their products world-wide.

Good for consumers, waste-reduction, and the EU

Gotta keep the EU happy, chinas turning on them

[Duque de Bragança]

Apple will apparently follow EU's charger standard - using USB-c for everything - starting next year; and apparently this will apply to all their products world-wide.

Good for consumers, waste-reduction, and the EU

Starts with the new iPhone 15, available in less than 10 days over here.

[Josquius]

Just what is with daisy ducks accent?
Sounds kind of 1920s which Google tells me is mid Atlantic... But it's very different to that.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't 20s/30s-ish sounding accent mid-Atlantic? Mae West, Cary Grant, the Hepburns, FDR etc?

[HVC]

So you can ignore that Donald sounds like he has throat cancer but daisy bewilders you?

[Josquius]

So you can ignore that Donald sounds like he has throat cancer but daisy bewilders you?

He's a duck. He sounds like a duck. :p

[HVC]

I'm more disturbed that Pluto seems to be severely developmentally disabled and mickey keeps him as a pet

[crazy canuck]

Apple will apparently follow EU's charger standard - using USB-c for everything - starting next year; and apparently this will apply to all their products world-wide.

Good for consumers, waste-reduction, and the EU

Starts with the new iPhone 15, available in less than 10 days over here.

Same here.

[Threviel]

Apple will apparently follow EU's charger standard - using USB-c for everything - starting next year; and apparently this will apply to all their products world-wide.

Good for consumers, waste-reduction, and the EU

Too bad, I find Apples solution superior, that's what I think should have been standardized on. Well, a standard solution for everything is better than different but better for everything.

[Jacob]

Too bad, I find Apples solution superior, that's what I think should have been standardized on. Well, a standard solution for everything is better than different but better for everything.

There are probably some issues with standardizing to someone's proprietary technology.

[Barrister]

Wasn't the defund the police thing more about defund the current police and recreate them from the ground up to better represent the communities they serve ala Northern Ireland?

I mean - mostly not.

"Defund the police" was a pretty vague term as a policy slogan, but no you can find several articles from 2020-2021 saying "when we say defund the police we mean exactly that - get rid of the police'.  They'd often also talk about getting rid of prisons.  They were all very vague and hypothetical about what would come after, however.

[Valmy]

I heard several different versions of what "defund the police" meant and I had my doubts any of them were going to do much to make anything better.

I mean I get the concept. The police, as institutions, have been dysfunctional forever and decades of attempts at police reform have had few concrete results we can point to and the police institutions (such as the unions) fight tooth and nail to resist any reform attempt anyway. We are never going to be able to reform the police without the cooperation of the police. So I get that RADICAL MEANS might be necessary.

But beyond a slogan reflecting this general belief I didn't see coherence around it. Some people probably did expect that they were demanding removing the police and prisons entirely and um...going back to mobs hauling accused before the magistrate before hangings in the public square or something. Others thought they were simply wanting to reduce the funding to police and having other service organizations handle some of the duties of the police to attempt to reduce violence citizens face. Others thought we were destroying the current system and building up a new policing system. And there were probably lots of other versions of this.

But ultimately nobody knew what it meant and there was no plan and so, ultimately, nothing happened. Even in Minneapolis where there was a promise to defund the police, no defunding ultimately occurred. Though we did get jokes about fans desire to defund the Twins after they lost their 18th consecutive Baseball playoff game that season. So that was one concrete result I guess.

So whatever RADICAL MEANS are developed to reform policing in the United States, defunding the police is probably a non-starter. At least until that means something coherent.

[crazy canuck]

Wasn't the defund the police thing more about defund the current police and recreate them from the ground up to better represent the communities they serve ala Northern Ireland?

I mean - mostly not.

"Defund the police" was a pretty vague term as a policy slogan, but no you can find several articles from 2020-2021 saying "when we say defund the police we mean exactly that - get rid of the police'.  They'd often also talk about getting rid of prisons.  They were all very vague and hypothetical about what would come after, however.

I don't think that is accurate.  You might find that on right wing sites and FOX saying that is what was meant, but it's bullshit.

It is clearly meant as a movement to remove funding for police to do things that would be better done by other social service agencies.  But that of course would mean providing appropriate funding for those other agencies.  If one wants to talk about common sense - there it is, but of course anathema to conservatives.

Much easier for conservatives to dumb down the idea into the notion that people just wanted to get rid of the police.  Whether it's because right wingers have lost the ability to think in a nuanced way, or they are just willfully ignorant is an open question.